European advertising and media industry launches privacy Trust Seal

WFA and other partners running the EU Self-Regulatory Programme on Online Behavioural Advertising (OBA) have taken another important step in the execution of the initiative: the launch of the EDAA Trust Seal.

What is the EDAA Trust Seal?The EDAA Trust Seal (pictured above) is an important part of the self-regulatory initiative. Designed to help achieve the all-important transparency objective, it will be an easily recognisable symbol for both consumers and business partners, which demonstrates the good standing and responsibility of companies which receive it. The Trust Seal enables companies to demonstrate that they meet standards set out in the European Principles on OBA.

How does the Trust Seal work?The EDAA-approved certification providers, TRUSTe, BPA Worldwide and ePrivacyconsult, will be responsible for independently assessing whether companies are meeting the requirements of the European self-regulatory Principles on OBA (http://edaa.eu/european-principles) and if so, issue a Trust Seal to compliant companies. The announcement marks a great step forward in the roll out of the Programme, which aims to increase consumer trust, transparency and control of OBA across Europe.

Who will monitor compliance of the Trust Seal?A crucial feature in ensuring compliance and trust in the self-regulatory programme is that the certification providers will continue to monitor the compliance of companies even after they have been awarded with the seal. This aspect of ongoing monitoring will provide detailed company compliance information for national self-regulatory organisations (SROs) across Europe, in order to facilitate their handling of consumer complaints on OBA in a consistent and efficient manner.

Oliver Gray, Director-General of the EDAA, commented: “EDAA has approved a choice of credible, independent providers with proven expertise in offering certification services to the EU online advertising industry. We are excited to embark on this new trust phase of the Programme, proving the accountable and responsive attitude of the industry to self-regulate, and today's announcement highlights just how far the EU Self-Regulatory Programme has come since the public launch of the EDAA in October 2012.”

The approval of Certification Providers is just one of several recent developments of the self-regulatory initiative. In June, the EDAA announced the approval of Evidon and TRUSTe as OBA Icon Providers, and launched a pan-European consumer awareness raising campaign, with the support of national Interactive Advertising Bureaus (IABs).